Ramme is a new unofficial Instagram desktop app for Mac. It is a wrapper around the Instagram mobile website, built using Electron, but looks and works like a native app on the desktop.
Ramme uses Instagram’s mobile app interface as its app UI and it works really well. This is due to Instagram’s minimalistic design which only includes two colors and simple line icons. The app does not have a full screen mode but its width can be resized to make the images and videos appear larger.
During our testing, both photo and video loading worked instantly and we had no issues finding any content using the search features.
Instagram had shut down access to most third party apps after its API changes a few months back. The reason that Ramme works fine is that it only lets you to use the mobile website in a beautiful interface, instead of using any API calls itself.
The developer behind Ramme has shared his roadmap for future updates, which includes the functionality to upload photos, Instagram Stories support, and a dark mode. Since Instagram does not officially allow photo upload from third party apps, we cannot be so sure if uploading will indeed make its way to the app.
Although the app looks beautiful, there are a few features that are missing. There is no push notifications support, although you can see your notifications by clicking on the heart tab. The app also does not let you tag any other user in comments. Other missing features include the inability to send and receive Instagram Direct messages. There is also no pull-to-refresh support, but you can press command + R to manually refresh.
If you are simply looking to browse Instagram, look at user profiles and perform searches, this is the perfect little free app. It is also available for Windows and Linux.
